Community-Owned Grocery Opens in a Kansas City, Kansas Food Desert
A cooperatively owned grocery store opened its doors in a Wyandotte County neighborhood that had gone years without a full-service supermarket.
After more than three years of organizing, a community-owned grocery store opened this month in a Kansas City, Kansas neighborhood that residents say had been without fresh food within walking distance for the better part of a decade.
The cooperative, funded by a mix of member shares, city grants, and a low-interest loan, stocks produce, meat, and household staples in a renovated storefront. More than 900 households have signed on as member-owners, each contributing a modest one-time share.
"People here were driving twenty minutes each way just to buy a bag of apples," said the store's volunteer board president. "That is time and gas that families in this neighborhood could not always spare." The store also set aside space for a teaching kitchen and plans to hire most of its staff locally.
City officials pointed to the opening as a model for addressing food access in other underserved parts of Wyandotte County, though they cautioned that cooperative grocery stores nationally have struggled to stay solvent.
